SANE LABOUR

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 29, 4 February 1914, Page 8

SANE LABOUR

PREMIER HOLMAN STATES ITS CASE CAUCUS AND CONFERENCE AN INTRANSIGEANT BLUNDER. Among the arrivals from Sydney by the Manuka to-day was Mr. W. A. Holman, the first Australian Labour Premier to pilot his Government back to office through the whirlpools of a general election. Such a, triumph of navigation suggests the skill of a greybeard, but that is just what Mr. Holman is not. Youthiul, dark, and handsome, also alert and magnetic, he is a remarkable embodiment of the height to which, in modern days, a young man may rise. Also, he is a Labour leader who is, in every possible way, the antithesis of demagogic or soap-box tendencies. Mr. Holman was interviewed on the Manuka by a Post reporter, who introduced the subject of constitutional Labour politics, emphasising the difference between the evolutionary Labour administrations of Australia and the revolutionary methods which' have been so much in evidence in New Zealand. A CONSTITUTIONAL PARTY. Mr. Holman remarked that the Labour movement in Australia had been a strictly constitutional one. " There are," he added, "a few isolated voices raised here and there urging that action be taken on other than Parliamentary lines, but they are growing fewer and fewer very rapidly. About six years ago we had a great division of opinion among trade unions as to whether they should concentrate behind the Parliamentary party or strike out on some fresh Syndicalistic method. In those days the propaganda of the I.W.W. — • an American organisation devoted to the general strike— was making much headway, while it must be confessed that the Parliamentary parties were not. They were in opposition in almost every State in Australia, and for the time being they were impotent to effect any immediate gain in the lot of the worker. During this period there was a growing tendency to assert that legislation could not benefit the worker, and that strikes ■ — above all, he general strike— could. We did not have any experience of a general strike, but we had a great many strikes, most of which failed. I cannot say that they all failed] some of them gained their immediate object. THE BREAKING OF THE SPELL. " But about that time the long nightmare of inaction that had been lying upon the Parliamentary Labour party ended. Steady organisation and propaganda work gained their victories, and South Australia, the Commonwealth, New South Wales, and finally West Australia elected Labour Governments. With this there began a period of active legislation in the interests of the workers and the removal of many grievances; and the work was undertaken of providing an instalment of Government action of a definitely Socialistic character, securing many economic benefits. In New South Wales a general election has just been fought and won. I do not think that anyone suggests now that there is any better method of righting the wrongs of the workers' than the Parliamentary one." You have lately met the caucus (of Labour members of Parliament) and the conference (of political labour leagues and unions). Have you anything to say on that point? A DARING INNOVATION. "The voting for Ministers at the caucus, which is a very daring innovation in constitutional practice, has so far been entirely justified by the results. The members of the party have risen to a sense of the responsibility lying upon them. The whole of the sitting Ministers who offered themselves for re-elec-tion have, with one exception, been returned ,• and the three new Ministers selected are three of the most experienced, sober-minded, and "responsible" men of our party. One of them was our late whip ; another was our late secretary; and the third is a farmer and also a man of affairs." And the conference? THE ANNUAL ESCAPE-PIPE. "The annual conference, though admittedly it is the annual escape pipe of the movement, through which waste steam gets off, and which is under the control of certain paid servants of the movement striving on that occasion to become its masters — the conference has also taken on the whole a fairly satisfactory view of its responsibilities. On the first day it met, under the guidance of the intransigeant section, what will prove ultimately to be a huge blunder was made in the case of Page. This was a matter about which much hot feeling had been raised, and a calm judgment was hardly to be expected. WILD IDEAS TURNED DOWN. "With this exception the conference was animated throughout by a full recognition of the necessity to strengthen the movement and to clear the way for effective Labour legislation. During the last three weeks the Liberal press has been making much of the more monstrous proposals sent in to the conference from some branch leagues and unions, suggesting that these insane proposals are the voice of the Labour movement. As a matter of fact the conference had rejected most of them up to the time I left." [In explanation of the Page incident, which may not be familiar to New Zealand readers, the following quotation from The Post of 28th January is of interest : —At the conference Mr. Holman "strenuously fought the revengeful majority that refused a place in the conference to Mr. F. J. Page ; an official Labour member of last Parliament, who was re-elected for . Botany despite his loss of the nomination of the Botany League. Apart from local bickerings at Botany, Labour has no grievance against Mr. Page except that, as an upholder of State rights, he refused to support the referenda. But Mr. Holman himself did the very same thing, and he was plucky enough to rise in the conference and ask, with telling effect : Why immolate the ranker and spare the leader? Mr. J. C. Watson's taunt about Mr. Holman's trip to London is no answer to the question. Th* fact is that the New South Wales Labour Party thinks it can dispense with Mr. Page, and knows that it cannot do without Mr. Holman."] A HAND ON THE FINANCES. Mr. Ilolman, in allotting the portfolios after the election of Ministers by the caucus, reserved to himself the Treasury, which was not among the Premier's portfolios in the last Parliament. His idea is to take direct control of the finances, there having been criticisms of the scale of expenditure. Liko all Treasurers, Mr. Holman rejoices in the cheaper money phase of tho London market. The legal position of Government Ilotise (.Sydney) still awaits a decision by the Privy Council. Pending that, the Government has thrown open the grounds to the general public, but there is no public access to the historic mansion itself except by special permission. The Liberal press made capital out of the refusal of the State Government to le-lease the property to the Federal Government, und ittid Hint Labour w«»

Labour won the General Election, notwithstanding. Mr. Holman says that as he has just got his Cabinet together, he cannot make any pronouncement as to policy. But the approaching session, will be almost solely a financial one, and should be not of long duration. A comprehensive programme will come later. LABOUR AND THE "LORDS." According to a recent cablegram the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Wade, has protested that the "swamping" of the Legislative Council with new appointments is a step that should be undertaken only in the last resort. Evidently, however, it is a step that the Government has not got in immediate view, for Mr. Holman stated definitely this morning that Cabinet had not considered any appointments to the Legislative Council, and that no such action would be taken for some considerable time. Further than this the Premier would not commit himself. There is. of course, always the possibility that an Upper House may prove amenable to reason and may not need "swamping."